Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Personal Highlights of 2008

2008 was jam-packed with stuff. Let's take a look at some of it, in a little picture essay entitled "How I spent 2008".

ANGEL:AFTER THE FALL and SPIKE:AFTER THE FALL continued continuing. I think ANGEL came into it's own this year, the second half of the series is, in my opinion, way better than the first half, and I couldn't be more proud of the work we've done. Also, working with Chris Ryall, Franco, Mr. Mooney, Mr. Runge? I highly recommend it to anyone who has the means. A great supportive, super talented creative team. And the covers by Alex Garner? Yes. He should draw covers for every comic, book, phone book, Bible, record album, cd cover, and movie poster.EVERYBODY'S DEAD was 15 years in the making (wrote it as a movie 15 years ago, almost made it with Artisan, now Lionsgate, 10 years ago). Five issue limited series, so far my creative highlight as a comic writer. The brilliant Dave Crosland on pencils/inks and Len O'Grady on colors made the decade-plus-half-decade wait to tell the story worth it. And Meltdown Comics was nice enough to throw us a party to celebrate the release of the book:

That's me and Dave. We had beer in our cups and we drank a whole lot. Dave and Jim Mahfood did live art (you can kinda see it on the wall behind us) . The party was also for the comic HAZED, which you should all check out.

It was the best party I've ever been to (and I've been to at least three other parties), we met the guys that run comicsoncomics.com, which led to me doing their show. You can find it by typing "comics on comics" into itunes or by clicking the link above. I'm in the first episode, but man, I would have killed to be on the Geoff Johns episode, as he's my favorite comic writer.

Also, the Meltdown Party? Chris Ryall slept on my couch that night. The next morning it smelled like potpourri and blueberries. Why? That is the mystery of Chris Ryall.

I also went to the San Diego Comic Convention and signed a bunch of books and hung out with a lot of great people. Need proof?

See? I clearly have a pen for signing and I'm hanging out with two great people. One of which is Chris Ryall, the other of which is Josh Jabcuga, the writer of the wonderful MUMMY prequel (drawn by Stephen Mooney!).

My wife and I bought a house which I won't show you on account of who wants to look at a house, but the house DID allow us to get THIS dog from the pound:

Her name is Peanut and that's what she looked like when we got her. Underfed and nervous and sickly, but a few months later she looked like this:

Wait, no. Sorry, that's my friend Rich. Peanut looked like this:

Also in 2008, we put up a short that we shot called PROFILES IN COURAGE. It's a fake documentary about a movie we made many years ago, and I think it's quite wonderful. We slapped it up on Funny or Die, and YOU CAN SEE IT HERE! A plug from Defamer gave us a flush of hits on it, and people seemed to dig it. That was pretty sweet, thanks Defamer!

We also returned to recording PARTY TRUCK USA, a podcast available HERE and on Itunes (who found us new and notable!). It's fun.

I also worked on movies for Fox and Dreamworks but since they're not in production yet I don't have any pictures to put up. Oh and a TV show for Fox 21. Again, no pictures. Sorry.

So yes, it was a good year creatively, plus we got that dog. If we could combine the two, have a comic about a puppy that fights vampires, that would be perfect.

I'll be back in a few days with a look ahead to 2009. I hereby predict it will involve vampires and, fingers crossed, goats.